We run three articles in this issue of our newspaper to which we would like to direct reader attention. The first of these is by regular columnist Sanjeewa Jayaweera who had a long career in the JKH group of companies and now sits on several quoted company boards who advocates severe pruning of our overseas missions. The second is by Franklyn Amarasinghe who long served and headed the Employers’ Federation of Ceylon and later held a senior position with the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva. He was commissioned by the government of Sri Lanka and ILO to make proposals for a dispute settlement process in the public sector. He had also served on many Wages Boards and was a onetime presidential adviser on human relations to the banking sector. Amarasinghe discusses the ongoing teachers strike and some other key issues and makes the point that the striking teachers are on full salary. He points out that it’s a cardinal principle of a strike, as confirmed by an ILO Committee of Experts, that strikers are not paid. This reality has been ignored in the existing confrontation and few people are aware of it. The third article under reference has been written by M.P. Dhanapala, a highly qualified scientists, with 50 years experience in rice research, both at the Batalagoda Rice Research Station he headed and overseas.

Sanjeewa Jayaweera’s father, the late Stanley Jayaweera, was a career diplomat at a time this country had a public service as different to what we are burdened with today as chalk and cheese. The writer who had accompanied his father to several of his overseas postings cogently argues that Sri Lanka, for a country of its size and resources, has way too many expensive overseas missions and it is high time that we closed many of them. Believe it or not, we currently have as many as 54 resident overseas missions worldwide. Compared to this, resource rich Singapore has just 36. Many of the countries where we have a presence are not represented here.

While there has been a long existent necessity for us to cut down in this regard, we have on the contrary been been opening new ones including one in the Seychelles! There is no need to labor the point that exorbitant and wasteful expenditure in this regard, as in almost everything we do, has everything to do with expediency and nothing to do with prudent and tight management desperately desired in our current predicament. The number of political and other ‘catchers’ posted overseas over the years for reasons other than necessity is too well known to bear repetition. There is no escaping the reality that our overseas missions and their representation has for too long been a massive pork barrel and the sooner we begin correcting this situation, the better for the country and its people. This years budget estimates published a figure of Rs. 11 billion (USD 58 million) expenditure to sustain this extravagance. That was at Rs. 190 to the U.S. dollar. But with the exchange rate well ahead of Rs. 200 to the dollar, that figure will zoom higher.

People are today being made to tighten their belts to an unbearable extent. Daily wage earners are in a terrible predicament not knowing where the next meal is coming from. But splurges in government expenditure continue unabated and the political class remain pampered. It was recently revealed that more monitoring MPs are to be appointed. One such worthy of the past was convicted of murder, released on a presidential pardon and appointed to a cushy state sector jobs. Making token contributions of a month’s pay to the exchequer, while living in government housing, riding official vehicles and enjoying sumptuous subsidized meals does not count for much in this context. Another of our columnists today has commented that the political class, regardless of whether its members are in government or opposition, is universally hated. Some of our best and brightest have left the country and others are looking for a way out.

Citing chapter and verse, the writer of the third article titled “Are we making rational decisions in the rice sector?” answers his own question with a resounding ‘No.’ Pointing out that the current status of rice production in the country was achieved through what he has called “mutual development of related technologies” for more than a century, he says: “It is not a matter to be ruled-out by the so-called expert advisors with one stroke of a pen; as a result of transition to nontoxic organic rice cultivation, the loss incurred in national rice production will be colossal. This is not the time to learn organic rice cultivation with text book experience of experts with no field experimental evidence, he says. He warns that given the covid pandemic and other natural calamities like drought and floods will adversely affect global rice production and further threaten our national food security.

Reducing our overseas diplomatic missions is not the only way of reducing government expenditure. Everybody knows that government money is spent by the political and bureaucratic class in a fashion quite different to how they spend money coming out of their own pockets. At least a halt has been called to further recruitment to an already bloated public sector. There are countless more ways to effect savings in public expenditure and all these must be pursued with the necessary political will. Junketing at public expense is not a way of achieving these objectives. How big a retinue accompanied the PM and foreign minister to Bologna? We are sure that many world leaders will be there for the G20 Interfaith meeting, where PM Rajapaksa will be physically present, virtually. If anybody thought being in Italy will mean an audience with the Pope, that has proved grievously wrong. Yet the taxpayer here will have to cough out yet another pretty penny on this account.